http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/35/special3a.html
HotWired
The Netizen
Banning Iran
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
Washington, DC, 28 August
The US government has quietly pulled the plug on Iran's Internet
connection. The catch? No one gave it permission.
Earlier this month, a National Science Foundation official blocked
crucial international links to Iran, apparently in response to an Iran
and Libya Sanctions Act that became law on 5 August. The move prevents
people in the United States from connecting to Iranian computers by
cutting off access to the country's only permanent Net connection - a
single, achingly slow 9600 bps modem.
The link joins the Internet at Austria's Vienna University, which
received a letter from an NSF employee - who the foundation claims
acted without authority - asking their network gurus to cease
forwarding Iranian data to American networks. The NSF employee, Steve
Goldstein, told the university that the United States embargoed such
exchanges with Iran.
From Austria, packets travel across the Atlantic through links funded
in part by US taxpayers, which Goldstein claims gives the NSF control
over them. Goldstein works in the agency's Networking and
Communications Research and Infrastructure division.
The NSF's action, however, tramples on the First Amendment. The
Supreme Court has upheld the right of Americans to receive a wide
range of information from abroad. An existing executive order
explicitly allows the import and export of Iranian informational
materials regardless of medium of transmission, according to Solveig
Bernstein, a lawyer with the Cato Institute. "Congress intended any
sanctions the president took to be directed at money and weapons
production, not communications," she said.
The NSF isn't accepting responsibility. The agency claims Goldstein
acted on his own volition. Although Goldstein declined comment, the
agency's lawyers say he was not authorized to block the line. "We were
not asked by Dr. Goldstein for any opinions, so I'm not sure on what
basis we're doing it," said John Chester, NSF legal counsel. Other NSF
officials did not return repeated phone calls.
Many Iranians in the United States are outraged at losing access to
friends, family, and educational links in Iran. Farhad Shakeri, a
software engineer at Stanford University who operates the Iranian
Cultural and Information Center, says: "Lots of people in Iran are
confused. They can't talk to any university in the world.... We just
want the problem fixed." Anoosh Hosseini, a webmaster at the Global
Publishing Group, says: "It affects me as a person. I want to visit my
cousin's homepage, and my brother's homepage. The University of Texas
has a Middle Eastern research center, but now they can't research Iran
[on the Net]."
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